We only had ONE parent criterion for college searches. Colleges had to be within a three hour drive from our home OR within an hour of a relative, or close family friend.
Kid one did the close drive.
Kid two did the 3000 miles from home but near a bunch of friends and relatives.
They both thought we were unreasonable…but we did not bend on this. I should add…it didn’t restrict them much…we have friends and relatives all over the place.
Anyway…they both “got it” when DD had emergency surgery in January of her senior year…scheduled for 6:30 a.m. thank goodness for a close relative and good friends who were able to be there…because even with the best plans…I would have gotten there the day after the surgery ended.
S18 will be going to school in the Midwest (we are in the south). I took him to visit the school in January. It was a 5 hour trip (including layover and plane change). He will be 30 minutes from the nearest airport but he can Uber or taxi from college to the airport. It’s a 12 hour drive.
I agree that plane tickets are great prices right now. We’ve already booked Hubby and S’s outbound trip for move-in day. And the hotel. It’s a small town and I didn’t want everything booked by August!
I went to college 9 hours from home, driving. Usually came home Christmas and Spring only, by Amtrak or Greyhound.
@grandscheme Goodness you must have aged 10 years with each kid.
My oldest son is a 8-9 hr drive away in S. C. It means I can’t pop in for a fall football game due to time, and cost of travel, time from work, and dog sitting for a bunch of dogs. But even scarier was a health issue that popped up in January and February that almost necessitated emergency surgery. I was getting prepared to literally move into a local hotel or Air B&B with him for a week or two if needed. The crisis was averted, but it was a concern. Fortunately, my younger son decided he didn’t want to be really far away. It limited his options, but will make my life logistically easier.
Distance is easier to control if you live in a part of the country surrounded by colleges. DD was very interested in LACs, and she had the grades and motivation to get in and get merit. There is exaclty one of these in our state, and as far as we can figure the next closest is a 10-hour drive (each way, winter not included). Once you’re flying, you just need to make sure that there are decent flights and ground transport. It’s a pain, though. If we had set some sort of “3-hour drive” limit her choices would have been very limited, so we just deal with it.
@VAMom23 Yes, at least 10 years. Each one. Have never been so unsure of myself in all of my life as navigating parenting young adults. OMG. BTW, DS1 was at VT and DS2 is in Cville. VT is such a pain to get to unless you live close. S.C. schools pose a similar logistical challenge. Not a transportation mecca. Glad the surgery threat was overcome. Not easy, huh?!
I was just having this conversation today. D goes to college in southern CA. We live in MD. We wouldn’t have looked at the schools she applied to in CA had they been too hard to get to. We are fortunate that we live near a major airport , D’s school is 10 minutes from the airport and that both SW and Alaska have direct flights. Door to door, for her, it’s an 8 hour trip. For me, only an hour (30 mins each way to airport to pick her up or drop her off). It’s a rather simple trip for her - she just has a carryon. Moving her in was easy - we did the BBB program picking everything out in our local store, then it was all ready for pickup at the BBB by her school. Only had to pack mostly clothes and a few other things we packed in IKEA zippered duffel bags that folded up and stored easily in her dorm room (no huge luggage to store, she just has her carryon suitcase at school). When she moves home at the end of the year, whatever she doesn’t need to bring home is going into a small storage unit she is splitting with her roommate who is also from NY. I’m actually glad we don’t have to transfer her stuff back and forth to home every year.
In terms of cost, thankfully SW and Alaska have reasonable fares most of the time. Because I was able to get a rather inexpensive flight for Thanksgiving by booking in the late summer, we did allow her to come home since it was her freshman year. Next year, she will probably only come home for Christmas. The Alaska direct flights are times no one wants to fly which works out perfectly for us b/c they are the cheapest. She took the red eye home Monday night and returned on the 6:20am flight the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and was back at school by 9am thanks to the time difference. All for less than $300RT, the busiest travel time of the year.
In case of emergency, we have friends who live 10 minutes away and BIL is 90 minutes away. I know we can rely on either to be there for her until we could get there.
We know many many kids who go south to school. When I hear about their really long drives one way, I’m actually thankful that dd has a rather easy journey back and forth. I chuckle when these same kids’ parents express dismay that I don’t mind my D being on the West Coast (“but it’s sooooo far”). Im like, um, it’s much easier for her to get to her school than for your D to get to Ole Miss. A friend recently went to look at UGA and said it was a total PITA to get to from here…flying into Atlanta, then renting a car to make the 90 min (I think?) drive to Athens. She wondered ahow annoying that would be if her dd chose to go there and now has “ease of travel back and forth” on her list of things to seriously consider.
I forgot to add…when I was in college, a four hour drive or easy Amtrak ride from home, I ended up in the hospital overnight during finals at the end of my freshman year. I can’t even remember why they admitted me -I had some sort of virus. I was 18 y/o, took a cab to the ER (and this was the South Bronx!), saw the doctor, got admitted, took a cab back to my dorm the next morning and stayed in bed for a couple of days, missing all my finals until my dad came to pick me up to move me out for the summer. I don’t think I even called my parents from the hospital-this was back in the day of pay phones. I survived! Back in those days, I think kids were a bit more mature in handling certain situations on their own, b/c they had to. My parents were much more hands off. They easily could’ve hopped in the car and gotten to the hospital that night (I think many parents nowadays would have).
I was 3.5 hours away. I could get a bus to my brother’s about 2.5 hours away and 1.5 ride from there to my house but no easy way to get from school to home by public transportation. It was fine. However my friend who lived next door to me (we had 4 friends in 4 singles in a row in a typical dorm) lived about 2.5 hours away in the opposite direction as me. It was years ago but I remember hearing her screaming in pain one night. One of us had a friend over who lived off campus so next thing I know the friend drove us to the er. She did come back but her father drove down and picked her up. She ended up having gall bladder surgery and was gone for the rest of the semester.
After a bit we noticed an odor from her room. We talked the resident director into watching us go into her room to get rid of food from her fridge such as milk. Her father drove back one weekend to get some things since it was more of a rush the first time. This was when people had desktops and not everyone had one in their room. I just remember suddenly a desktop on a cart on wheels appeared in my room and her father said that she didn’t need it at home so we could use it. She came back in January.
For my daughter after she applied and was accepted to all her schools we did go over transportation without a car. I was glad that if needed she can get herself home for a weekend fairly easily by public transportation and perhaps a cab/uber from all but 1 school. The other school is 2 hours away when there is no traffic. She eliminated that school but not for that reason alone. Schools 4.5 hours away were easier to get home from plus we have relatives that are local enough.
My D19 realized this problem when we took her to look at some schools this year. We live in FL (1/2 hour to 2 airports so lots of options) and took her to see Hobart, St. Lawrence (our alma mater) and UVM. We told her how difficult it was tiger there from here but actually doing it made her really see what it would be like. For the first two it is 1/2 hour drive to the airport, fly to Atlanta, change planes and fly to Syracuse, then either a 1 hour or 2 1/4 hour drive to the schools. UVM is a little bit easier because there is an airport in Burlington and there are direct flights a few times a week.
When DH and I went there he lived in FL and had that crazy commute to SLU. He wasn’t able to go home for Thanksgiving and usually not did spring break either. I lived in MA and it was a 6 1/2 hour drive. We all got so used to that drive that we would go home just for the weekend once in a while! The great thing was that for a few years after that it made road trips so easy- want to go somewhere hours away? That felt like nothing to us!
My daughter is 1500 miles away. She has a 1 hour shuttle ride to the airport ($23), 3.5 hour direct flight home (sometimes under $100), and a 30 minute ride from the airport. Last summer, her roommate kept her stuff in her basement. She moved off campus after one year and is not coming home this summer (except for maybe a short visit). It’s been pretty easy. Thank goodness for Southwest! A long drive to the airport or a lack of cheap direct flights would have been a deal breaker.
S19 is barely getting started on his search but seems likely to stay within half day’s drive. I went to college 2 hours from home and could get a $13 bus ticket home any weekend.
I always wonder about the south Florida kids/families who go back and forth to Tallahassee (FSU).
It’s a 5 hour drive to Gainesville (UF) from down there.
Luckily we moved up here but phew - when I’ve gone back to visit it has occurred to me that I wouldn’t have wanted to make that drive multiple times in a semester (and probably would have ended up doing so).
I secretly am grateful DD2018was waitlisted at one of her top choice schools…no direct flight and still quite some distance from the nearest airport of any size would have made for a logistical nightmare!
DD2018 is almost 1200 miles from home, but the direct flight makes it an easy commute and nearly the same timewise to the commute we will make for her sister to stay in-state.
Ahh yes, Florida State. D1 was accepted. Then I was surprised to discover there were no direct flights between Newark and Tallahassee. She’d have to change planes in Atlanta. Off the list.
I notice for many of you a plane change or layover is a deal breaker. Is a layover a big problem? Perhaps just because it’s one more chance for things to go awry? If DD’s option had nonstops, I would be much happier just for the time savings, but I don’t know if it’s a deal breaker.
I’m waffling so much on this topic. Whether being a flight (with a layover to boot) away will be just fine, sort of a hassle but okay, or a she-will-surely-die situation (j/k on that last one, I think).
@bjscheel Yes, it’s exactly that - a layover makes problems more likely! Missing a connecting flight due to a delay, issues with luggage, and just the aggravation of boarding, waiting in the tarmac, and deboarding TWICE.
My family has gone to a much further airport just to get a direct flight to Costa Rica than to have to deal with a layover!
Our airport isn’t a hub, so eliminating any school that required a plane change would eliminate most of the options.
I went to college a 20 hour drive from home, and we slept in the car at rest areas along the way for lack of money for hotels. Planes were expensive, so when I had extra money from working, I’d take a 24-hour train trip to the city that was only a 4 hour drive each way. Needless to say, I only came home at semester breaks, when the dorms closed. When I was in the hospital at school, no one even considered my parents coming to visit. The world did not come to an end!
That said, DD will almost certainly fly to school, and while I care not one whit whether she picks a school with 10 hours of airport-to-airport time, getting to the airport from a school 60 miles away is likely going to be a consideration. OTOH, it’s not going to be me making that trip, and I have no expectation that she’ll come home other than at semester breaks, so not a dealbreaker from my perspective.
My DD made her first “has to handle a layover independently” flight at 12, and considers layovers in DEN and MSP to be a feature, not a bug. She strongly prefers Southwest, and would probably assign bonus points to a route where SW was the obvious best choice. But it’s only 8 round trips over 4 years.
@SouthFloridaMom9 - Florida is a long, long state, isn’t it? Certainly it’s nice when they can attend a school within a reasonable drive home. There is a definite difference between 6 hours round trip and 12 hours round trip!
Re: layovers - for me I wouldn’t say that would make or break a decision, but it’s definitely in the ‘negative’ column. When you think about winter break or Thanksgiving break… I’m in CA, let’s say my kid goes to school in the midwest or East Coast but not near an airport that has direct flights to SFO… the odds now double that there’s a snowstorm when he’s traveling when you consider both his originating airport and wherever he’s connecting (unless he connects in the south, but from here a lot of connections go through either Denver or Chicago).
“You an fly from SFO to SLO’s airport. It’s an hour flight.” @MLM good to know that’s actually an option… my friends’ kids who go there just drive or take the train.
My sis had a similar situation with a call from a hospital that my niece was on a ventilator and they weren’t sure if she would live. What had been an easy flight there school turned into a nightmare very long drive that started late at night. It is something that pained me desperately when my daughter applied to cross country schools. My sister never thought about how hard it would be to get there in an emergency.
